


Code Name Bond

by RembrandtsWife



Series: Code Name Fanfic [6]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall - Fandom
Genre: Codenames, Ghosts, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Multi, Polyamory, Post-SPECTRE, Secret Intelligence Service | MI6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:04:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8692204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: "James Bond" is and has always been a codename, a mask passed from hand to hand. "Don't let the mask eat your soul the way it ate mine."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Well here it is, finally: The end of the series. Thanks to Nookienostradamus and DizzyRedhead for beta and ongoing support, and to everyone who left comments on the other stories.

The text alert from his personal phone startled Q out of deep concentration. He was running multiple simulations, rotating his attention amongst half a dozen screens. Startlement turned to unease when he recognized the sender as Moneypenny on her personal phone. 

_Bond in hospital at St. Bart's. Car crashed, Swann is dead._

At once he seized his work phone and fired off a text to Tanner, asking for confirmation, then began the process of transferring control of the simulations he was running to S and T so that he could go see Bond.

Tanner met him at the hospital, water dripping from his overcoat and trickling through his thin hair. "You know he's been in deep cover since Swann walked out on him," he said without preamble.

Q nodded. "Yes, I prepped him extensively." And tried my damnedest to talk him out of it.

"Someone must have gotten to him, despite his cover." Tanner shook his umbrella, wincing. "He initiated the endgame prematurely. And wound up here. Too bloody beat up to protest."

Q nodded. "Moneypenny said Swann--"

"A lab accident." Tanner bared his teeth in contempt. "Three dead, her research ruined."

Q wanted to rage, wanted to cry, wanted to blow something up. He settled for a sigh that rattled every rib. "May I see him?"

***

"You've broken almost twenty bones. That's nearly one-tenth of the bones in your body."

Bond blinked slowly. Q's cool, damp hand rested on the shoulder that wasn't bandaged; both Bond's wrists and several fingers were broken.

"Not to mention the knife cuts, deep enough that you needed stitches, and the tooth knocked out, and the bullet that grazed your calf."

Q's narrow fingers were trembling against his fevered skin.

"You've an infection, too. You're burning up." Q's eyes glistened through his square spectacles.

With some effort, Bond managed to look directly at Q by moving his eyes but not his head. "Did you get a degree in medicine while I was undercover?"

"James--"

"You brought him flowers? That was a waste." Eve breezed into the room with a hint of perfume, something light, lime and rosemary. She slipped her arm around Q's waist and tilted her head at Bond. He was trapped here, casts and traction and IV lines. They had him at their mercy.

"You look dreadful. Nearly dead."

"See if I like your next new pair of shoes, then."

"You're going to be in hospital for a while, this time."

"They keep sedating me," Bond muttered.

"That's because you keep trying to sneak out," Q said.

***

Eve slammed the door of the stall and pressed her hands against it, choking back a sob. Damned stupid stubborn bastard-- The treacherous sob escaped and she muffled her face in her sleeve, pressing harder on the cool, slightly tacky door. Why did he keep throwing his heart after his cock like this, fooling himself some girl mattered just because he'd saved her life? Why had that bitch Swann left him when he'd been on his way out of the service, for her sake?

Eve slumped against the stall door and cried into her purse. 

***

He must have fallen asleep. Q and Eve had left, and the room was dim. He was wakened by a stream of words in a low familiar voice, a voice that had cut and cured him a thousand times.

"I shouldn't have let you go back into the field the last time, you know. Your test scores were abominable. But I needed you too much. You were the only agent I was absolutely sure I could trust. So I kept you going, and then Mallory needed you. But you've got to listen to me, James. Get out before it kills you. You're nearly dead inside, anyway. Get out before it's too late."

He went back to sleep. When he woke later, his bladder full and his body throbbing with pain, he realized he must have been asleep all along. He'd heard the old woman talking to him, but she was dead.

***

"You have to have something of a death wish to be a double-oh agent, anyway."

"This wasn't just a wish. It was suicidal, actively suicidal." Eve's fingers tightened in Q's hair, relaxed when he squeaked in protest.

"Look, I want him to get out of it as much as you do. I thought he had. But that woman--" Q shook his head, rubbing his face against Eve's breast. "I don't like to speak ill of the dead."

"They're all dead." Eve shivered. "But there'll always be another one, won't there?"

***

They kept him in the hospital for nearly four weeks. At the time, they felt like the worst four weeks of his life. Once he was back in his flat, he privately admitted that he did feel better for having had a proper time to recover. His left shoulder, where the knife had gone deep, still ached often, even after his casts were taken off and his shriveled, sun-deprived skin had begun to revive.

Bond thought about islands. He thought about women who asked no questions. He thought about the blue swells of the Mediterranean and the differing blue of the Caribbean and the black beaches of Hawaii. He thought, once or twice, about eating his gun. 

But visitors kept interrupting his thoughts. Q emailed him constantly, Eve frequently. They insisted on seeing him, singly or together, at least once a week, sometimes twice or three times if they could persuade him. Eve brought him fabulous casseroles her mother made. Q brought his pizza stone and large bottles of red wine and made pizza in Bond's kitchen. He had sex occasionally with one or both of them, but he didn't notice that they stayed overnight merely to sleep with him more often than to fuck.

Not only that, but Tanner stopped by a few times with beer and they watched football together. He turned out to be surprisingly good company. He didn't shout too much and didn't support any of the wrong teams. And he showed no inclination to talk shop, which was fine with Bond.

***

"We can't have an agent in the field who's trying to kill himself."

"Why not? Isn't that the grand old tradition, going out in a blaze of glory?"

Tanner suppressed a multitude of twitches. M saw them anyway. "He never should have gone back into the field after the Lynd business," M said. Tanner relaxed a fraction. "You know that as well as I do. If it had been up to me, I would have transitioned him into teaching or consulting right then. But Mansfield was in charge and she believed, perhaps rightly, that he was the only field agent she could trust. And he did better against Silva than any of us had hoped."

M leaned back in his chair and gazed for a long time at the painting on his wall. One painting of a ship looked much like another to Tanner; he wondered what M saw in this one. 

"It's too late now to shift him behind a desk. He's got to make a clean break. He's got to give up the name."

Tanner stiffened. "Do you have a replacement in mind, sir?"

M did not answer immediately, but he sounded certain when at last he spoke. "Yes, I do."

***

Four weeks in hospital. Another six weeks at home being curiously docile. Bond stopped thinking of islands or of anything else in particular. He got rid of a few pieces of furniture and replaced them with things he liked better. He watched that American television programme with the dragons and the clever dwarf fellow and re-read favorite novels he hadn't touched since his teens, among them Asimov's Foundation series and Kinney's Time and Again. He had drinks and dinner one night with Felix Leiter, who wouldn't say whether he was in town on business or for pleasure, but Bond found he didn't care. He enjoyed the man's company and didn't even get drunk. He was drinking more beer and wine, less whiskey these days, and sleeping well.

He woke again one night covered in sweat, his shoulder throbbing, hearing her voice--M's voice--come out of the darkness of a corner, low and sharp.

"You're not the first who's reached this point, you know, and you won't be the last. We're like players in a theatre, taking up the masks when it's our time and handing them on to others when our stint is done. You've done your stint, James. You can let someone else be Bond. Some wounds will never quite heal, but you can walk away with nothing but a few twinges on a rainy day. Don't let the mask eat your soul the way it ate mine."

There was no one sitting in the corner, on the chair where he had tossed his jeans when he stripped for bed. Yet he saw the gleam of her eyes in the darkness. Outside, thunder cracked simultaneously with its parent lightning, and he could not control the shudder that wracked him.

***

He went to her gravesite at last, bearing flowers. She was buried next to her husband, under her own name, as if she were any ordinary woman of business or law, or a writer or a university professor, no one important, not the center of a vast web that held an island in its place. He paced back and forth by the headstones for some minutes before he could bring himself to approach, and leave the flowers. He tried to say something, but it was useless. He'd never understood people who talked to their loved ones at their graves. If the old woman still existed anywhere, it wasn't here.

That night he dreamed of her for the first time he could remember. The dream was a simple one, an image just before waking: Watching himself sleep beside her in her bed. Just sleeping, his bare arm and shoulder visible on top of the duvet, M a small mound under the covers and a silver tuft on the pillow next to his. Lying on his back in those first moments of waking, he tried to remember: Had he been holding her in his arms, or only lying beside her? What would it have been like, if he had ever held her close while she was alive?

After his second cup of coffee he emailed both Q and Eve. _My place tonight for Chinese? I'll change the sheets._

Eve responded with a smiley face that had little wicked raised eyebrows. Q wrote back, _I'm bringing pu erh and you can't stop me._

Q brought his pu erh tea, which came in small hard discs with an indentation in the top, like tiny bird's nests, and smelled like a stables. He also brought the tea set he reserved for the pu erh. Eve brought the discreet little bag in which she carried various toys and supplies they would likely use later, after dinner, and oolong tea, and wine (to kill the taste of the tea). 

Bond ordered lavishly from his favorite Chinese place, a plethora of dishes meant to be eaten in small portions, easily shared. He had finally recovered enough that doing the duties of a gracious host did not set off spasms of pain all over his body. Eve and Q were watching him closely at first, he knew, but they soon relaxed as they realized he wasn't covering anything. Was this what having friends was like--knowing that people could read your tells and not caring?

They had progressed to the wine after dinner when Eve slipped into his lap and took his face between her hands. Her breath was warm with wine and spices and a hint of the strong, earthy tea as she searched his face with gently probing eyes before kissing him. Q slid up next to Bond and curled his hand around the back of Bond's neck, caressing the fine short hair there and the cords and muscles while watching Eve and Bond make out.

When Eve slithered down to kneel between Bond's knees and open his trousers, Q took over kissing him. James huffed softly against Q's mouth as Eve worked on his cock. She reached for Q's zip with one hand, and he pressed his face into Bond's strong neck as she alternated between their cocks, now sucking, now stroking. James held Q as he shuddered to a climax, making a mess of his jeans and Eve's hands.

James practically carried Q to the bedroom. Eve excused herself to wash her hands and stripped down before joining them on the bed. James was kissing Q, rubbing his mouth all over Q's lips and over his scruffy evening beard and down to his long, sensitive neck. Q closed his eyes and whimpered when James bit all his favorite spots. Eve curled up cross-legged next to them, rubbing idly at herself, but mostly watching: Q's pleasure, his long thick lashes sinking to his cheekbones and two spots of color on his pale cheeks, and James's scars, so numerous, and so many still red, unhealed. She remembered shaving James in Hong Kong, remembered feeling for the first time the heat of his body and smelling him, his sweat, not his exceedingly expensive cologne. She hadn't imagined then that this massive male animal would learn to lie tame under her hand.

No, she thought, as James turned Q onto his belly and spread his arse cheeks. Bond wasn't tame and never could be. He was tired. One more pass of the red cloak, and he might go down before the matador.

Eve's hand ran down his back and cupped one arse cheek, her nails pressing in just a little. By now James knew what that meant and signalled his consent with a shift in position that would give her better access to lube him up while he worked on Q. His boy was nearly in a shoulderstand now as James ate his arse, fucking the tight little hole with his tongue until it sucked greedily at his questing finger. Fucking Q while Eve fucked him, then falling asleep between them sounded like just the ticket. Then maybe he'd call Tanner tomorrow, sound him out about coming back to work.

He had two fingers in Q's arse, Eve had three fingers in him, when the pain lanced through him without warning. Bond roared, caught completely off guard, and collapsed onto the bed, one arm twisted under him, his other hand sliding away from Q's warmth. At once his lovers were close to him, querying, petting, checking him over. "Where does it hurt?" Everywhere, was the answer he couldn't quite voice. The knife wounds, the broken bones, the swollen bollocks, the jolts to his heart. He heard himself making loud anguished noises and could do nothing to stop.

Moneypenny eased him onto his back, stroking him like an old dog. Q went away, came back wearing one of Bond's t-shirts. He pressed both hands on James's chest, over the tight ache just to the left of his sternum. Eve went away and came back wearing a dressing gown.

The old woman was sitting in the chair in the corner, wearing a crisp linen suit and modest pumps of the same neutral color. Bond looked at her and she looked at him, shrewd, silent, patient, pitiless, as always. "'Livia," he gasped. Eve and Q followed the direction of his gaze, then exchanged puzzled glances. Well, they weren't having a brush with death. He was having a brush with death. He was having a heart attack.

***

Q was reading reports from his staff with an ear cocked for the ping of a text on his phone. James was out of the hospital but still a bit weak, and easily bored; he'd been watching old Doctor Who episodes and snarking about them to Q and Eve in their shared chat. Q was grateful for any distraction from the dry and dutiful reports he had gotten this month; what he wouldn't give for minions who had a little *enthusiasm* for the job.

"Quartermaster."

Q stood up as the stranger approached his desk. Good suit, well-groomed, expensive watch, expensive cologne: A new agent. Very tall, very broad, he moved as lightly as a big cat; his white smile in a dark, handsome face looked almost as predatory as a panther's yawn.

"So I am. How can I help you, Agent…?"

"Bond. James Bond." 007 held out his hand.


End file.
